


Mothers

by electropeach



Category: Realm of the Elderlings - Robin Hobb
Genre: Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:34:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24389731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electropeach/pseuds/electropeach
Summary: For the RLBB2020 event on Tumblr, for prompt 4: mother.A collection of snippets of various mothers of the Realm of the Elderlings with their children.
Relationships: Various mothers with their various children
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: Rote Ladies Big Bang 2020





	Mothers

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to include only mothers from the Fitz books, because they are more clearly twined around the same story and form a more coherent whole. Maybe I'll also do something for Liveship Traders and RWC mamas at some point. :)
> 
> Just as I love that there are so many complex, different female characters in this series, I also love that there are so many different mothers, and so many different ways for that to manifest. I love that there are mothers just trying to provide their children with the best they can in a bad situation, mothers who would do anything for their children, tired and realistic mothers, fiercely protective mothers, bossy mothers, calm and reasonable mothers, mothers whose best for the child is to not keep them and mothers who can't have children of their own but love the children of others as their own, just as in real life.
> 
> And above all, I love that in real life there are mothers like my own, who teach their children to love reading and by doing so hand them the keys to whole new universes and let them discover ones such as this one. <3

She had turned her back on her son for all of three minutes, to help a sheep untangle a bur out of her wool, and he had already managed to climb atop a boulder almost as tall as she was. She let out a small sound of dismay as she spotted him, but Keppet grinned at her with all the gap-toothed glory of a five-year-old.

“Ma, look!” he rejoiced in his mountain-climbing abilities, and she couldn’t be mad at him.

“Keppet,” she said, half despairingly, half laughing. Her heart was tight in her chest for fear that the boy would topple over and fall, and she tried to not let it show in her manner because alarming her son was the likeliest way to make him stumble. “What are you doing up there, my lamb?”

“Seeing all sheeps,” Keppet informed her gravely, his chubby little arms behind his back like when he was reciting his lessons to his grandmother. _Lessons_ , she thought bitterly, for even for a child as young as Keppet, recounting the same three nursery rhymes about sheep and cooking herbs hardly counted, but her father had made it clear that no time was to be wasted teaching the boy to reckon or read even as much as his own name. _Let the whelp’s father educate him_ , he had told her stonily when she tried to reason that a boy who could count and read even a little would be much more useful to them.

And so Keppet watched the sheep with her, and took his job very seriously. Just a few days ago, he had been distressed that he was too small to properly see them all, when she had told him to keep an eye on the sheep while she got them water from the well. And now he had solved the problem. _Clever boy_ , she thought fondly, even as she worried for him.

However, she would have to figure out a way to get him down and discourage him from climbing up again. “Well, it’s good that you can see all the sheep from up there,” she said, “but I can do that from down here.” The boy looked offended. “But you know what I can’t do – I can’t protect the herd from below, from snakes and sneaking little creatures, because I’m too tall for that. Could you do that for me?”

Keppet considered, then evidently decided that it was appropriately manly of him to do this task that even his mother could not, and reached out his little hands for his mother to pick him up and set him down on ground. His hand was small and warm in hers as she took it and led him to a spot on the grass that she told him was excellent for sitting down and keeping an eye for the sheep’s underbellies.

“Here,” she said, crouching down next to him and pointing for him, her pale cheek pressed against his dark one, “just look that way, and keep an eye on the grass, and if it twitches…”

xxx

“… Beat it down,” Desire stressed her words by stamping her glass on the table with every word. Her wine sloshed around dangerously, but never spilled. There was little left to spill. “Do you understand? Show them your throat once, and they’ll expect it always, and tear it out when you’re vulnerable. These commoners, they’re ruthless. Do you understand me, Regal?”

Her son, leaning his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands, made a sound that sounded dangerously close to a bored sigh. “Yes, Mother.” His eyes flicked up at her, then at the door, and she knew that the boy longed to be out carousing with his friends. Her poor boy, scooped up in that cold dreary castle for most of the year, it did him so much good to be here in Tradeford for a few months every summer. Here, among others like him, among people of prestige and breeding, he thrived. No wonder he was eager to go and spend as much time with them as he could, but this was important, it was imperative that he understand this.

“No, you don’t,” she said, smacking the table with the bottom of her glass again. “No, Regal, you don’t. You don’t. You think I’m exaggerating. I see you look after them when they go hunting or playing at swords, and you want to go with them.”

Regal scowled suddenly, taking his elbows off the table to cross his arms across his chest and slump back in his chair in an angry sulk. Desire smacked the table with her glass again, and Regal shot up straight in his seat, arms still crossed and face still angry, but back ramrod straight and posture otherwise proper. “No, I don’t,” he still insisted, almost snarled. “I don’t, I hate them, I don’t want anything to do with them.”

“Good,” Desire said, “because they don’t want anything to do with you, and they’ll kick you out of their way as soon as they can. They know you’re of more royal blood, and like all commoners, they will use whatever means available to try and hold on to what little power they’ve gained.” She looked at her little boy, his eyes darkening at her words, his scowl deepening and turning stony. Her poor little child, suffering and becoming weak with coughs and colds each winter in that dreadful town, all because Shrewd was too much of a mossy rock to move their court to Tradeford. Doomed to fight for his birthright because the ridiculous old man would not recognize that his two older sons were barely even of noble birth, and certainly not royal, because the old fool loved that overly clever little Chivalry and the oafish Verity better than her boy.

Well, the least she could do was fight for him, and help him on his way to claiming his birthright. “I know it stings,” she said, gently now. “You know you can trust me, dear, you know I’m the only one you can truly trust. Just let me guide you, and never…”

xxx

“… Ever eat that!” Molly admonished her daughter even as she swore vehemently in her mind. She had turned her back for two whole seconds to stir the stew bubbling happily at the fire, and already the rebellious little troublemaker had stood unsteadily, made grabbing motions at the table with sticky hands, managed to catch Burrich's unfinished letter to Chade, and was now stuffing Burrich's good paper into her mouth as fast as her tiny fists could manage. Nettle tried to sink her growing baby teeth and soft gums into her mother's finger as she stuck it in the child's mouth to scoop the rest of the paper out.

"Always making mischief!" Molly grumbled to herself as she wiped the gooey paper and saliva off her fingers, giving her daughter a scolding glare. Nettle, now seated on the floor, pursed her lips and blew her a disapproving raspberry, clearly affronted that her excellent meal had been interrupted.

"Well, and language like that, too!" Molly exclaimed mock-severely. Nettle burbled at her and stuck out her tongue, and Molly was biting her lip trying not to laugh and thus approve of such behavior when a completely different type of burbling reached her ear. Her stew was bubbling and spilling over the edges of the kettle, hissing into the fire.

“Oh, El’s balls!” she exclaimed as she dived to save their meal, cursing Nettle for distracting her from cooking and cooking for distracting her from Nettle. There was plenty of swearing and muttering attached to saving the stew; Nettles seemed to find it amusing, for she made squealing little noises and clapped her hands enthusiastically.

As soon as the kettle was safely off the fire and Molly had checked that it wasn’t too badly burnt, she gave her daughter a sheepish look from the corner of her eye. “I’ll make a deal with you, young lady,” she suggested. “You don’t tell Burrich I said bad words, and I’ll never let him know who ate his paper. How does that sound?”

Nettle was already using the table leg to pull herself up, greedy eyes fixed on the tabletop again now that her mother had ceased to entertain her with swearwords and juggling the hot kettle in her hands.

Molly sighed. “Fine, you obviously know you can do no wrong in his eyes. What am I going to do with…”

xxx

“… You there! That’s my bag!”

The boy started and jumped back from her yell, scrambling into the shadows of the alley like a wild animal. Starling huffed and strode to her horse, cursing herself for leaving her saddle bags unattended outside an inn, like an idiot. Who knew what the little street rat had stolen…

An apple. The boy had stolen a single apple. Which she knew not because she had counted her apples, but because the boy was now edging back into the dirty yellow light cast over the porch of the inn, one hand outstretched and holding the apple.

“I’m sorry,” the child said – and a child he was, a skinny boy of no more than seven – looking ashamed. “I was just… I didn’t mean to steal.”

“Well, you did,” Starling returned waspishly, and then felt a tiny stab of guilt when the boy flinched. She stared hard at the boy’s bony wrists, threadbare clothes, and – ugh – bare feet in the mud. Probably yet another Red Ships War orphan, maybe even a raider’s bastard. “No, I don’t want it now,” she said before she could stop to consider why. “You’ve already got dirt all over it. I’m not eating anything that dirty, so you might as well.”

The lie slid easily off her tongue, because the boy had just moved forward and put his face in the yellow light. In it he looked sickly pale and genuinely sorry, but Starling had only seen his mismatched eyes, which widened almost comically when she told him to have the apple. Eda and El in a tangle, if the boy wasn’t really an orphan, he couldn’t have been much better off than that; even if he wasn’t a raider’s bastard, the war-ravaged villagers would resent feeding a malformed child like that.

She looked at the boy devouring the apple, core and all, and it felt like staring into the face of the ghost of the child she hadn’t wanted.

“Do you have a name?” she heard herself ask.

The boy had finished the apple, but was still licking his lips, trying to catch every bit of sweetness and juiciness to stave off his hunger. His mismatched eyes flitted to Starling’s, then away. “I’m called Mishap.”

Starling’s heart lurched. If the child’s appearance wasn’t clue enough, his name told the rest: no one wanted this one. She didn’t exactly think of herself as the maternal type, but she found she also wasn’t heartless enough to leave the child where he was. But she could hardly travel around with him hanging onto her coattails; she would have to find some noble fool she could talk into saving the boy.

Luckily she had just such a noble fool in mind.

And so she made up her mind, turning to go back into the inn and tossing her head to indicate that the boy should follow. “Come on. I think I know someone you should meet. You’ll like him. He lives with a real wolf, if you can imagine, but he’s not as bad as he looks. He can be a little grumpy at times, but I’m sure you’ll be…”

xxx

"... Friends, at least. Love may grow from that, but companionship can be so much more important than that."

"Friends?" Dutiful looked at her in disbelief, his expression one that only a youngling believing himself tragically misunderstood could muster. "But mother, she is eleven! Shall we have tea parties for her dolls, perhaps? What will we ever have in common?"

Kettricken smiled at him and sipped at her tea. "And you are fourteen. Likely she is just now asking _her_ mother to tell her what she can possibly ever have in common with you, because all fourteen-year-old boys care about are showing off to their friends and telling one another rude jokes. Will she have to simper and titter at your crude stories?"

The prince was affronted. "I do not tell rude jokes! I find them in poor taste and insulting to both listener and..." He trailed off, realization dawning in his dark eyes. He looked suddenly flustered and chastened. "I see," he said, more quietly now. "I suppose not all girls of eleven play with dolls."

"Precisely." Kettricken set down her cup with a soft clink and a softer sigh. "Dearheart, I understand your reservations; I remember having some myself. But a Sacrifice is not free to choose. Dutiful, she will not remain eleven forever. In the blink of an eye she will be a young woman coming to live in a foreign court, if all goes well. It would go a long way to build bridges between you two for her to have at least one ally and friend here when she does - and for that ally to be her husband.”

Dutiful nodded, but she could see that her son was distracted, like he had been since his engagement to the Outislander narcheska had first been brought up. Her heart went out to him, her brave young son, and she was glad that he at least seemed to have found comfort and companionship in his new hunting cat, a gift from the Bresinga family.

With a warm smile, Kettricken reached out across the table to squeeze the boy’s hand, resting next to this tea cup. “Dutiful. Please take my words to heart. I know the burden is heavy, sometimes, but it doesn't always have to be. With effort and luck, you'll gain someone to share your burden. Someone to…”

xxx

“… Choke and suffocate with your herbs! Out. Out, now!”

Elliania’s words seemed to echo in the room, and her maids, servants and healers were scattering about her chambers like a nest of ants poked, trying to scramble around finishing their tasks and gathering their equipment and make a hasty exit. She scowled at them from her semi-reclining position on the massive, too-soft bed. All this foolish pampering and scenting and burning candles and incenses! Soft pillows and warm wool blankets and her feet propped up just so, and her head supported like this! How was she supposed to give birth in this? If the baby didn’t get smothered in downy mattresses and blankets on its way out, surely it would choke on the thick, cloying scents blanketing her chambers!

She knew her husband would make hurt doe eyes at her when he heard that she had yelled at his people and dismissed his learned healers and herbalists, knew that her mother-in-law would give her a patient but reproachful look, but she didn’t care, she wanted her own mother with her, her own mothershouse around her, her own mothersland underneath her, just the hard floor before the fire, and furs only to wrap herself and her babe in when it was over. Her mother and sister and female cousins singing a slow chant for her to time her breathing with. The safety of her sturdy home walls and her childhood scents around her.

But no, she had given that up to go with Dutiful, and after tonight this castle would be her child’s mothershouse. She was a conquering woman, a narcheska staking her claim on new land, and claiming it for her blood by her blood.

And when the fluttering people had finally cleared the room and left her alone, she felt safe enough to put her hands gently on her round belly and admit to her child that even conquerors could be afraid, sometimes.

“What do I know of children?” she asked her child, wincing at another contraction. The healers said it would not be long before her water would break. Elliania thought it ample reason to strip the bed of its sumptuous mattresses and blankets or let her recline on the floor, but the fat little man had assured her that soft bedding was best for noble ladies such as herself, for they were known to be quite delicate and fragile. Elliania had thrown a delicate and fragile vase at him. “Well, not much. But I will protect you. Provide for you. I will name you, on your first day like they do here, for I will see to it that you make it through your first year, and damn all bad luck I may invite by doing that. Nothing can get at you through me.”

Yet another contraction shook her small frame; she gasped and bit her lip at it, breathing through her nose in slow, measured breaths. There were merits to her mother-in-law’s and husband’s silly meditation techniques.

She opened her eyes, slightly hazy on when she had closed them, and looked at her fingers, which had curled convulsively on her belly. She smoothed them out, and abandoned all propriety by hiking up her gown and stroking her fingers down her naked stomach. Her baby answered enthusiastically, kicking and flailing to meet her touch, and she felt reassured. “Believe me, I am as eager for you to get out as you are,” she said, and if her voice was gentler now, not the growl of a protective she-bear, she blamed it on her pregnancy muddling her mind. “I can’t wait to meet you. We will get along well, I think, and when you’re old enough, you can…”

xxx

"... Look at what I made, Grandmother, look!" Small hands pushed something into hers, while another pair tugged at her sleeve, startling her awake from her light nap in her garden. Disoriented, Patience blinked into the sunny afternoon of reality, her dream of Lacey sitting by her in dappled sunlight, laughing merrily as she knit, fading like smoke. Bewildered, she looked down at the little will-o-wisps dancing and jumping around her chair, until finally they solidified into Hearth and Just, Molly's two youngest, babbling excitedly to her. They had made toys for themselves, a little wooden cart and a vaguely horse-like figure to pull it, and each was eager for her praise.

"Slow down, slow down!" she told them. "You're just blurry smudges jumping like that, how am I supposed to look at what you made?" It was easier to focus her old eyes on them when they finally stopped, standing absolutely still now, giggling to themselves as they let Patience examine them and their new toys with exaggerated care.

"Well, what do my eyes see! Two young bandits harassing a noble lady!" a voice drifted to her ears, and she turned to bestow an affronted scowl at Fitz - Tom - whatever he called himself now, to tell him that she could manage both bandits and little boys perfectly well on her own, thank you very much, but the boys were already running to him, toys and voices once more raised.

She watched them while Fitz took each toy to examine it seriously, praised them for their cleverness and skills, and then suggested that their mother would be most pleased to see them, sending the boys careening towards the manor, each trying to make it to Molly first. She looked at the son that wasn't hers, and the boys that weren't Fitz's, and marveled at the miracle that she could still have them all. Fitz looked up from following them with his eyes, and smiled as his eyes met Patience's. Oh, how much like Chivalry he looked just then, her son, and how much like Burrich the little ones running away from them, her grandsons.

"May I join you, Mother?" her boy asked as he strode to her little tea table in the most comfortable corner of her garden. Her boy was a boy no longer, but whenever Patience looked at him, she could still see the bewildered boy of thirteen standing at her door, standing straight at her command and making Lacey hide her sniggers into her knitting. _You should have been mine_ , she had yelled at him, not long after that, and now, finally, when he called her mother, she could almost believe he was. And wasn't he, in all the ways that mattered?

"Of course, my dear," she replied to him, and waited as he took a seat in the spindly little garden chair that had been Lacey's in her dream, sniffed dubiously at her iced tea - and really, she had attempted the one with spinach only _once_ , and hardly deserved such distrust - and poured himself a glass. She still set them for two, and since Lacey's glass had attracted Fitz's company, she neglected to mention that it wasn't for him.

"Well, Mother," her boy began, darting a small smile at her, "I have just finished my rounds of the farms for today, and have heard enough stories of sheep to last me a lifetime. Will you tell me of your day?"

"What, the boring day of a silly old lady?" Patience tutted, waving her hand, and then immediately launched into a story of her day. "Why, first of all, I was just having a most lovely dream when those two young rascals startled me awake. Fair made my heart stop, those two! In my dream, Lacey was sitting right there - yes, just there - and she told me..."

xxx

"... That I will never let you fall. Don't be afraid, sweetling. One foot forward, just so..."

Bee swayed on her little legs uncertainly, her curly blonde head tilted back and wide blue eyes looking up at her. Her tiny fingers squeezed at her forefingers with all her fragile might as she stood unsteadily between them, holding onto them for dear life, it seemed. She made a bubbly little sound, and Molly smiled down at her gently. She was leaning protectively over the girl, her long, greying hair falling in a curtain around them, hiding them from the world.

"I know, I know. But you don't have to walk alone before you think you can. Come, dear, just a few steps for your Ma, let's practice. You can take all the time you need." She didn’t say it, but her other children had walked much earlier than her youngest – the boys had learned to run first, and it seemed that they had never bothered to learn to walk, while Nettle’s drive to learn to walk had been to reach everything they had placed out of the reach of her greedy little hands. Bee was twice as old as each of them had been, and barely half the size, and seemed content to sit on her bottom and move by crawling; all previous attempts had merely led to Bee being able to stand while holding on to her mother's fingers. Perhaps that was a kindness, because Molly hardly felt young enough to go running after a toddler speeding heedlessly along corridors and stairs. If she set out running, Fitz had better go after her.

Steeling her heart against her daughter’s worried glance, Molly took a single step forward, still bowed over her daughter, her hands supporting the small girl between them. Little Bee tilted forward with her mother’s hands, her eyes widened even more, and then her tiny booted feet followed, one at a time. Bee's victorious squeal was infectious, and Molly laughed with her, her full, throaty laugh mixing with Bee's shrill, thrilled giggling as she moved a bit again, and Bee made three more unsteady steps.

"That's right! What a clever girl you are!" she praised her. Bee stomped her tiny feet excitedly in place, as though eager to walk now that she had discovered the very basics. Indulgently, Molly took another step, and Bee followed, with so much stomping and with such wobbly legs that half the time she only remained upright because of her grip on Molly's fingers. She seemed delighted at her newfound skill, and made little shrieks of joy and babbled at her mother almost constantly.

_There you have it_ , Molly thought in vehement satisfaction as her daughter’s steps grew slowly steadier, until she finally tired and dropped her hold of Molly’s fingers to fall on her bottom and start a thorough examination of her small soft boots, perhaps to see if they had suffered from being walked on. Her youngest did not grow and learn as most children did, perhaps, but grow and learn she did.

And if she did take a little longer than her other children to reach her milestones, what did it matter? They were landed gentry, now, and Molly would have the rest of her life to stand guard over her child, and guide her steps for as long as she needed her.

“There you have it,” she repeated out loud, this time to Bee, as she settled herself on the floor beside her and pulled her against her chest. “You can do it, you can do anything at all if you set your mind to it.” Bee sighed happily in her arms and turned to snuggle more comfortably into them, her tiny fingers catching and tangling into her mother’s hair. Molly laughed again and let it be; at least Bee didn’t pull on it like Switft and Nimble had.

And as her youngest drifted off to sleep, she kissed her curls and pressed her cheek against them, her dark skin against her daughter’s pale forehead, and whispered, “But most importantly, sweetling, I didn’t let you fall. And I never will.”


End file.
